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People don't just want to feel satisfied. They actually want to act.

Martha C. Nussbaum

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Martha C. Nussbaum
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More quotes by Martha C. Nussbaum

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When I came to Harvard, there were no tenured women except one, who was in a chair reserved for a woman. It's still an uphill battle, and I encountered great sexism in parts of my career, but I have to say that things are a lot better than they used to be. There are many women today doing wonderful work all over the academy.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I am a very big fan of the nation, actually. In Cicero's time, there was this idea that although we were members of the whole world of human beings, we also needed to connect our imaginations to a smaller unit. The smaller unit was something we knew we could live or die for, as Cicero died for the Roman republic.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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When a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that's good.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I do think there's a lot of bad writing, and I worry about that in philosophy. I worry about it even more in literary studies, but I wouldn't blame it on any one methodology.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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The humanities prepare students to be good citizens and help them understand a complicated, interlocking world. The humanities teach us critical thinking, how to analyze arguments, and how to imagine life from the point of view of someone unlike yourself.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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The great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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There's a gap in perceptions between women and men. Women feel much freer than they did, but still, when alcohol is involved, especially, there's a lot of sexual assault, and a lot of confusion about that. So, we need to focus a lot more on what consent is and on the importance of affirmative consent.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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People have a deep need to be legislators, and the idea of autonomy has become very precious.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I think we need government to play a part in having a health policy that makes nursing care available for the increasing numbers who are going to need it.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Choice matters. You might have the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Economists get impatient with philosophy. They are often trained as skilled mathematicians. They don't like going back to ordinary language and first principles.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count the examined life has global dimensions.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I think the imagination helps us move out of the purely oppositional mentality and see the world in a richer and more variegated way.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment.... Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Notice that all the traditional things philosophers do, looking for validity and soundness, promote civic friendship. That sounds pretty pie in the sky, yes, but I actually believe it.
Martha C. Nussbaum